Which laptop?

[Acidburn]

Hello, I have a few questions:

After comming off the phone from me mom, whose nicely suggested that she'll go half to a laptop...

I have 2 questions-

*Importanting a laptop like this : laptop

this is still in the UK but if I buy it from lets say America its half the price. - Would Ipay import duty? If so how much will the total cost be - would it be any cheaper?

*If I did buy it from overseas, would it work? Since voltage differential...

Does anyone else have any input on which laptop I should get?

Cheers

John

[jwenting]

From the US you'd pay import duties, plus UK VAT.
You'd also get a US-only warranty, and of course a US 110V powersupply.

Many US companies won't ship overseas, certainly they won't be allowed to ship a laptop with software overseas as many software companies don't allow their US products to be sold overseas (US law involved there).

Total cost of getting it into the UK, getting UK software for it, and a UK powersupply, would be more than the savings.
Remember that VAT and import duties are leveraged over the FULL cost of the order INCLUDING shipping charges.
The item will also be charged for VAT and duties at the price it would cost you in the UK, not necessarilly the price you paid for it in the US.

[jwenting]

As to what laptop to get, that's impossible to say without you giving some indication about your budget and requirements.

If you have 500 pounds to spend on a laptop on which you want to do some websurfing and word processing you'd get different advise than when you have 2000 pounds to spend on a machine for high end photo processing and programming.

[Acidburn]

Just a laptop that will be ideal to take home when I'm at uni. Ive got a full end of the range PC - not ideal for throwing in the back of the car and taking home... Bit of a time consuming to set up once at home too.

Basically it would be ideal for running Linux maybe... not sure yet! And doing high end programming and web surfing with it...

Budgest wise... just under £1000

[jwenting]

Any of the current crop of laptops should do then.
For programming in my experience RAM is usually more important than CPU so you may decide on a machine with more RAM and a slightly slower processor.

Toshiba, Dell, and HP have some decent machines in that range, personally I'd go for a Centrino based machine with 512MB RAM and a decent size harddisk.
As you're not interested in videos and games (at least primarilly) get that down first and look at the graphics card only as a secondary concern if you can get several machines with the same CPU and other options inside your budget.

Also look at battery life. You will want something that can last several hours on batteries at least. Handy in a traffic jam or when you're stuck waiting for a train or in an airport.